In the communications industry, the need for faster communication between computer elements is ever increasing. As can be appreciated by the rapid advancements in processor speeds, there is also a need to increase the speed of communicating data across computer systems. However, prior systems have proven limited in their capabilities. The traditional methods of increasing speeds include increasing signal rates or increasing the number of wires used in a communications medium. Increasing signal rates, however, means increasing the speeds of all the electronic components in the communications path. In addition, signal bandwidth must be increased, leading to more distortion in the communications medium. Furthermore, increasing the number of wires creates additional expense in manufacturing, decreases reliability and adds unwanted bulk or stiffness to the communications medium.
There have been some attempts to increase the speed of communications mediums without increasing signal rates or adding more wires. For instance, systems have provided for unidirectional data transfer in both directions on a data bus; the data transfer, however, did not occur in both directions simultaneously, only in one direction at a time. If only the data could be transmitted in both directions at the same time, then the rate of data transfer over a communications medium could significantly increase without having to increase the signal rate or without having to add more bulky and expensive wires.
Previous approaches are not only limited in the speed of data transfer, but also in the cost-efficiency of transmitting data signals across communication mediums. For instance, state of the art communication mediums require that wires be highly toleranced to avoid signal distortions. However, high tolerancing is an expensive manufacturing cost. If there was a way of reducing signal distortion in the communications medium without having to rely on high tolerances, then a great deal of cost could be eliminated from the manufacturing of communications mediums.